Technological Advancements in the Industry?
At about the time mechanical guns were leveling off, electro-pneumatic guns were invented. Electros quickly improved during the ensuing years, but for the last five years, no large technological improvements have been made. Prices have plummeted, but the guns of 2003 can still compete with the newest models.
Loaders can feed and guns can shoot faster than fingers can pull the trigger, so where is new innovation going to head within the paintball industry? Guns could be lighter and more efficient, but there's a physical limitation to how much metal can be removed from a gun and there's a minimum amount of compressed gas that's required to fire the gun. I'm convinced that we're really nearing the point where no major technological innovations are possible with the current compressed air/CO2 paintball gun design. For the last few years, all that the industry has done is made minor improvements and dropped prices as innovations have stagnated.
I can think of three areas where the paintball industry can still innovate, but all of them would mean that some major aspect of current paintball equipment must change. First, eliminating the air tank by compressing air in the gun - a prototype of a self-compressing gun appeared a few years ago but nothing has made it to market. Second, changing the power source away from compressed air or CO2 - Tippmann created the pump C-3 which used propane, but it's the only gun to not use air or CO2 that I'm aware of. Finally, manufacturers could design a gun that fired guns purely mechanically, whether it's with springs or something else.
While manufacturers will continue to produce new guns, unless something drastic changes, there will really be nothing "new" about them.


Comments
IMO, modularity is where it is all going. Now that can have a marker that can zip as fast as they want it to, being able to change out parts as will be ideal. Tippmann has done a good job with this by putting out the X7.
I also expect to see a lot of people trying to make their marker look unique. I think we’re going to see more custom annodizing jobs, and all kinds of wacky stuff done to markers to make them stand out. In the far future, paintball equiptment might get cheap enough that some high schools may have teams, though I can’t see this happening for some time.